1. Can you sum up what are your occupation and the missions of France Supply Chain?

Along with Jean-Francois Rey, Peggy Stauss, Cassandre Jacquin and Françoise Lieuré who has just joined our team, my mission is to manage the member network, organise and support all the projects they are involved in and promote all the actions taken by the association.

France Supply Chain has over 450 member companies and schools, which accounts for about 3,500 members.

France Supply Chain has been committed to promoting the Supply Chain function and all its professions for 50 years. Supply Chain covers a wide area that encompasses many activities from sourcing to product recycling, purchases, supplying, planification, production, storage and transport.

Supply Chain is also a key lever to transform companies for a sustainable world, as it accounts for 60 to 80% of the cost structure.

Members of France Supply Chain work together to conceive the content and tools needed to help the member companies, who are attentive to have a positive social and environmental impact. For each one of them, this is also a place where they can share, exchange and help each other while they are carrying out their missions.

France Supply Chain activities are organised around LABs that are in charge with producing the deliverables (papers, tools, conferences, etc.).

• The Human Resources LAB seeks to strengthen the relations between education, research and the companies. It also works on adapting the trainings to the current Supply Chains and improving attractiveness with the help of the Youth LAB when it comes to identifying new skills.
• The Digital and Technologies LAB deals with issues related to digital transformation. It is a place where you can share about real life cases.
• The SupplyChain4Good LAB (SC4Good Lab) launches concrete actions that are good for the planet, people, and performance for 12 to 18 months.
• The SME LAB has developed a programme to help these companies master the fundamentals of Supply Chain.

2. France Supply Chain turns 50 this year. What should we remember of the progress you have made in some key measures?

As I said previously, our association’s strength lies in its ability to draw on its members’ collective intelligence and more recently to implement collaborative projects.

The social, societal and environmental issues are incorporated into all our actions. Topics like urban logistics, the implementation of alternative energies and social integration are at the very heart of our concerns.

Our actions come to life in the LABs through projects like EVOLUE (Voluntary commitment for efficient urban logistics) – where France Supply Chain is working with the Club Demeter and the French Institute of Commerce – and in the LCMT (Low carbon maritime transport) association. France Supply Chain and the French Freight Transport Users Association (AUTF) co-founded with the LCMT in order to implement low carbon maritime transport lines.

We also issued a “Manifesto for a more sustainable supply chain” in which we made official our vision of a supply chain that is more sustainable for the planet, people, and performance by 2030. Our vision is one that can be understood by the greatest number of people. In this manifesto we highlight impressive initiatives that prove that we can grow by supporting circular economy, biodiversity restoration, and a radical reduction of pollution.

3. France Supply Chain has been a close partner of the CNE for a long time. It works to promote logistics commitment to a lower environmental impact. Which France Supply Chain’s actions are related to packaging and packaged product logistics?

The first topic that we are working on with the SC4Good LAB is the e-commerce package. Its goals are twofold:

• Reducing the environmental impact of e-commerce packaging, which both implies reducing C02 emissions and waste, and eliminating non-recyclable plastic.
• Improving the consumer’s perception by ensuring a balance between the perceived quality service, the product manufacturing and the environmental impact.

4. What are the major concerns of France Supply Chain members regarding packaging? Is the CNE legitimate to gather information about these concerns with its working groups?

We want to strengthen our actions regarding the packaging issue for several reasons.

The French Anti-Waste and Circular Economy Law will eventually prohibit single-use plastic packages. It imposes manufacturers to come up with other solutions and urge consumers to have new habits, by fostering reuse and re-filling for instance.

Pressures on the use, or better say the non-use of plastic, and its elimination drive actions to reduce its use and replace it with alternative materials such as cardboard or glass. As plastic cannot be completely replaced now, we must focus our efforts on reducing grammage in packaging and using recycled plastic, which availability is very inferior to demand.

To increase recycled plastic availability, these very manufacturers should also work on plastic recyclability by making sure to eliminate of their packages anything likely to disturb the sorting industry, like metals.

Cardboard packaging should follow a similar approach by fostering the reduction of its use, its origin traceability (cardboard should come from managed forests, in this case), the use of solvent-free ink, etc.

Finally, there have been many tensions, especially recently, that place the issue of packaging among our members’ short-term concerns.

We are planning to develop operational partnerships (value analysis, comparability, adaptation of the packaging design strategy, implementation of safety stocks, reduction of payment delays, etc.) and equity operations – as some recycling technologies need huge investments – in order to have access to materials and the end packaging product.

We believe that collaboration is vital to address corporate social responsibility issues. A close partnership with the CNE is legitimate – and welcomed – to organise workshops on the Anti-Waste and Circular Economy Law, its interpretation, and recent evolutions. This can be done through experience sharing. The “sensitive” topics mentioned earlier can also be discussed during these workshops.